It’s been 25 years since the attack on the World Trade Center, and we all remember it like it was yesterday. It was a beautiful, sunny, crisp morning. Our daughter, who wasn’t born yet, asked us about that day.
I was home, a graduate student, and doing last-minute items for our wedding, which was at the end of the month. I was on the phone with my mother-in-law, and we were both watching Good Day NY when we saw the second plane hit the Tower. We both got off the phone and made phone calls. Cell phones weren’t the main form of communication as they are today, so between the Internet chat programs and the landline, we tried to make contact with everyone. My soon-to-be brothers-in-law were within distance of the Pentagon and the Towers. I happened to be chatting online with the one by the Pentagon just a few minutes before everything happened, and he was safe. My brother-in-law who worked in the building right next to the Towers, saw what happened and told his entire office to get out now!
My husband was working in Jersey, and he was able to get in touch with his brothers prior to the phone lines going down. I called my mother, woke her up, and said, “Get in touch with my uncle,” because my cousins worked in the Towers. It was a day of waiting to hear if they were alive. We found out my cousins had just gotten back from their Honeymoon, got to work late, came out of the subway, looked up, and went right back to the subway and home.
Our daughter is part of the theater group at her high school, and they are doing the show “Come From Away“. We never heard of it, but she played some of the music, and the lyrics hit me harder than I thought. She asked us about our experience on 9/11 and after. Like how we flew to JFK and, from above, saw the wreckage still burning. How we had friends and family who helped at Ground Zero and were also affected for years after, and how my husband got transferred to the NYC office afterward, and it was scary.
I know, I know…we are usually sarcastic with our words, but today isn’t for that. Never Forget
